B5 - Practicing and Re-imagining Our Work Through Hiring, Racial Justice, and Centering Motherhood: Frameworks and Learnings from AMCHP’s Women’s and Infant Health Team

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Full Description: The Women’s and Infant Health team (WIH) at AMCHP is a collaborative and dynamic group committed to advancing racial justice and gender equity so all may experience a standard of physical, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness that mothers, birthing people, their families, and communities define and deserve. Over the past few years, the WIH team has developed a team-specific definition of health equity and strategically operationalized this definition in our work. This process was not one that happened overnight, nor is it one with a discrete finish, but rather a process the team works to embody and iteratively progress. In this workshop, we will focus on three major steps that continue to aid us in centering equity in our work: hiring practices, understanding racial equity in health equity and recentering motherhood.

An initial step in the WIH team’s process is intentional hiring practices that celebrate diversity in identity and expertise. Associate Director Andria Cornell will share her revelations and strategies and discuss how the team’s hiring practices have led to a greater and deeper understanding of racial and reproductive justice in our work, as well as brave spaces for team members to be unapologetically themselves.

A second step is the unique ways that we infuse racial equity into our work with external partners and with one another. Program Manager Kristina Wint will share highlights of this journey and how racial equity allows us to be more honest and genuine with each other about difficult topics, leading to both team bonding and strong alignment on advocacy and initiatives internally, and externally, the tools to center equity while navigating partnerships and relationships with stakeholders.

Program Associate Giannina Ong will share ideas and praxis for recentering motherhood by analyzing histories, being contentious of inclusion, and paving new paths forward in women’s health. Recentering motherhood is controversial in our nation's white capitalist culture: throughout modern American history, white supremacy and capitalism have shaped motherhood as a narrow and oppressive experience, though there is not that same sentiment in other cultures. By recentering motherhood as a transformative life experience and an essential cultural and creative expression, we can reclaim motherhood as well as the perinatal cultural practices that have been erased by colonization and medicalization. In addition, we suggest that centering motherhood can improve outcomes across the lifespan.

In MCH work, many of us are ready and eager to incorporate equity principles and concepts, but often struggle with where to start. By the conclusion of this workshop, attendees will have the tools to begin that journey and the inspiration to incorporate these strategies into their own practice.

Abbreviated Description: The Women’s and Infant Health team at AMCHP is a collaborative and dynamic group committed to advancing racial justice and gender equity so all may experience a standard of physical, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness that mothers and birthing people, their families, and communities define and deserve. Learn what it means for them to hire diverse teams, embody health equity and racial justice, and center motherhood.